Monday, July 2, 2012

Pirate Party

Those of you who follow politics in the rest of the EU are probably aware that the Pirate Party has been making waves in Germany. The Pirates, born in Sweden but spread to other countries, are sometimes dismissed as a "party of geeks," whose main interest is in the use of the Internet as a political forum, free sharing of software, music, and film, and opposition to laws allowing the state to monitor private Internet usage. But the German Pirates have expanded their purview to become a more broad-based anti-system party and defender of civil liberties. They have been receiving 6-7% of the vote in some elections.

In France, there is also a nascent Pirate Party, but it didn't fare well in the last legislative elections, garnering under 1%, despite fairly decent press coverage. This article describes the French Pirate Party and explains why it will have a hard time matching the performance of its German counterpart.

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I have been a student and observer of French politics since 1968. In that time I've translated more than 130 books from the French, including Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Thomas Piketty's Capital in the 21st Century. I chair the seminar for visiting scholars at Harvard's Center for European Studies and am a member of the editorial board of French Politics, Culture, and Society and of The Tocqueville Review/La revue Tocqueville. You can read some of my writing on French politics and history here and a short bio here. From time to time I will include posts by other students of France and French politics (accessible via the index link "guest"). My hope is that this site will become a gathering place for all who are interested in discussing and analyzing political life in France. You can keep track of posts on Twitter by following "artgoldhammer".